The double standard lives

Yesterday, a 24-year-old college student was sentenced to six months in prison for managing the prostitution business that former NY Governor Eliot Spitzer patronized, the exposure of which led to his resignation. Spitzer was not prosecuted for any crime, in light of the fact that he used no public funds to pay for his visits to prostitutes.

Cecil Suwal was not so lucky. Apparently, the six month sentence she received was something of a compromise between the two years of imprisonment sought by the prosecution and the recommendation from the court's probation office of a suspended sentence plus time on probation.

One way to understand this is that Michael Garcia, the U.S. Attorney in New York, has decided that when Eliot Spitzer paid to have sex with the women who worked at Emperor’s Club V.I.P, he had sex and they committed a crime. In fact, it is the policy of most federal prosecutors to charge sellers, but not buyers, of sex with a crime. Last I checked, the federal government hesitates not in the least to prosecute both the buyers and the sellers of illegal drugs, and both the givers and the receivers of bribes. Yet sex, it seems, is different.

One Response to The double standard lives

I thought the idea of punishing johns by printing their names in the paper was rediculous. At worse give the buyer a fine. This way the govt. make money off it — without having to deal with the opposition of making it legal.